Love, Science and the Brain

This Valentines season, I would like to talk about a topic that is very intriguing to most but nevertheless essential in our understanding of the human body. This is something that we always do in our everyday lives but rarely thought of how it actually works and why we felt that way. It is an emotion called Love.

We love because we are fond of that person, wants to care for them and are sensitive to their needs and emotions. There are different ways to express love, depending on the type of relationship you have with that person. But, whether they are your parents, siblings, friends, special friends or your special someone, your body reacts with their surroundings and creates a cocktail of chemicals that would translate to love itself. 

As of the moment, two scientific disciplines have so far attempted to explain the processes that leads to the emotion of love. The fields of Evolutionary Psychology and Neurochemistry. 

Evolutionary Phychology*

Evolutionary psychology has proposed several explanations for love. Human infants and children are for a very long time dependent on parental help. Love has therefore been seen as a mechanism to promote mutual parental support of children for an extended time period. Another is that sexually transmitted diseases may cause, among other effects, permanently reduced fertility, injury to the fetus, and increase risks during childbirth. This would favor exclusive long-term relationships reducing the risk of contracting an STD.

From the perspective of evolutionary psychology the experiences and behaviors associated with love can be investigated in terms of how they have been shaped by human evolution. For example, it has been suggested that human language has been selected during evolution as a type of "mating signal" that allows potential mates to judge reproductive fitness. Miller described evolutionary psychology as a starting place for further research: "Cognitive neuroscience could try to localize courtship adaptations in the brain. Most importantly, we need much better observations concerning real-life human courtship, including the measurable aspects of courtship that influence mate choice, the reproductive (or at least sexual) consequences of individual variation in those aspects, and the social-cognitive and emotional mechanisms of falling in love." Since Darwin's time there have been similar speculations about the evolution of human interest in music also as a potential signaling system for attracting and judging the fitness of potential mates. It has been suggested that the human capacity to experience love has been evolved as a signal to potential mates that the partner will be a good parent and be likely to help pass genes to future generations.[5] Biologist Jeremy Griffith defines love as 'unconditional selflessness', suggesting utterly cooperative instincts developed in modern humans' ancestor, Australopithecus. Studies of bonobos (a great ape previously referred to as a pygmy chimpanzee) are frequently cited in support of a cooperative past in humans.

In Neurochemistry

In the United States, Helen Fisher of Rutgers University has proposed 3 stages of love - lust, attraction and attachment. Each stage might be driven by different hormones and chemicals. 

Three Stages of Falling in Love**

Stage 1: Lust

Lust is being driven by the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen (estrogen). Testosterone is not confined only to men. It has also been shown to play a major role in the sex drive of women. These hormones as Helen Fisher says "get you out looking for anything".

Stage 2: Attraction

This is the real love-struck phase. People think of nothing else when they fall in love. Might lose appetite or have problems sleeping. They sometimes daydream of being together with the person they love. For family relationships, that also translates to tantrums or a "mini"-depression when they don't see their parents often. 

In this stage, several groups of neuro-transmitters called 'monoamines' play an important role:

Dopamine - Also activated by cocaine and nicotine.

Norepinephrine - Otherwise known as adrenalin. Starts us sweating and gets the heart racing.

Serotonin - One of love's most important chemicals and one that may actually send us temporarily insane.

Discover which type of partner you're attracted to by taking our face perception test.

Stage 3: Attachment

If a relationship is going to last, this is the next phase. It is said that people could not possibly stay in the attraction phase forever, otherwise nothing will be ever accomplished.

Attachment is the bond that keeps couples together in a long lasting commitment when they move on to have children. There a two key hormones released by the nervous system, which is currently thought to have a major role in keeping social attachments:

Oxytocin - This is released by the hypothalamus gland during child birth and also helps the breast express milk. It helps cement the strong bond between mother and child. It is also released by both sexes during orgasm and it is thought that it promotes bonding when adults are intimate. The theory goes that the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes

Vasopressin - Another important chemical in the long-term commitment stage. It is an important controller of the kidney and its role in long-term relationships was discovered when scientists looked at the prairie vole

Find out how the three stages can feel even stronger for teenagers in love, experiencing first love and first sex.

Source:

* Wikipedia
** www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/love

Excerpts on Gamma Radiation

Taken from the book "Defining Moments in Science". Article by Kate Oliver

Key Discovery : 1900

While studying the properties of beta radiation, the French chemist Paul Villard made an intriguing observation. He noticed that in experiments where a beam of beta rays was refracted (passed through a medium of different density), there were often traces of another, unrefracted beam in the results. 

Villard set up another instrument, using the newly discovered element radium as a source. He focused a beam of radiation from the radium through a series of glass plates and a magnetic field, to be recorded finally on photographic film. The unrefracted beam appeared again. It did not seem to respond to any external magnetic or electric fields, and would even show up on the photographic film when it was placed behind 0.2 millimeters of lead.

Villard suggested that the radiation he had found was a new type of more penetrating X-ray. He concluded that the three distinct types of radium beams - easily absorbed rays, a dividable stream of charged electrons, and his new super-penetrating X-rays - were analogous to the three types of radiation emitted by cathode ray tubes. With this observation, Villard correctly generalized radiation into the three types we now know as alpha, beta, and gamma. There was, however, very little interest in his discovery or theory, perhaps because it was outside the current scientific paradigm.

In 1903, Ernest Rutherford, having studied the penetrative power of the beams, named them gamma rays and his term soon fell into common usage. Villard, however, remains pretty much forgotten.*

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Gamma Rays is a form of electromagnetic radiation. Of all forms of electromagnetic radiation, they have the shortest wavelengths and the greatest energy. 
It can be produced either as a result of a nuclear reaction or by the annihilation of matter by antimatter. Nuclear reactions that result in the emission of gamma rays include some types of radioactive decay and the fission (splitting) of a nucleus.

Gamma rays are very penetrating; even a thick sheet of a dense material such as lead will not block them entirely. When these pass through matter, they eject electrons from the atoms they strike. This process, called ionization, is harmful to living cells. A living thing exposed to intense or prolonged gamma radiation can become seriously ill and die.

Gamma rays are used in industry to inspect castings and welds. The gamma rays are passed through the object being inspected onto photographic film. The image formed on the film can reveal defects that are invisible to the eye or hidden from direct observation. In medicine, gamma rays are used to destroy certain types of cancer. Cobalt 60 is a substance that is commonly used in hospitals as a source of gamma rays for this purpose.


Artificial satellites have revealed that a variety of astronomical objects, including the sun, clouds of interstellar matter, and remnants of supernovae, are sources of gamma rays. They have also detected strong, random bursts of gamma rays from unknown distant sources.**



Source: *Defining Moments in Science: Over a Century of the Greatest Discoveries, Experiments, Inventions, People, Publications and Events that Rocked the World. Page 14.
** science.howstuffworks.com

Other sources:

http://www.universetoday.com/73704/what-are-gamma-rays/
http://www.universetoday.com/26831/top-ten-gamma-ray-sources-from-the-fermi-telescope/

Do I Need to Think Critically?

http://figures.boundless.com/17756/full/critical-thinking-skills.jpeg

Thinking critically is a challenging and fun (sometimes) way of - well, thinking things. Many people aren't really aware they are doing it. When a student does his homework or when a family man (or woman) budgets their income for the rainy days, they are already thinking critically. Think of anything you have done in the past that does not require that you think. I can bet you can only think of only a handful, and most of it has maybe not so good consequences. But still, come think of it. You've been thinking your way through life since you've been made aware of all these choices and decision that has come along your way.

So what is critical thinking anyway? Is it just really, REALLY thinking hard? Not really. These are skills that all of us, young and old, need to learn to be able to solve problems and make better decisions. Information are gathered through observation, communication, experience, or through the use of our senses. This information is analyzed and evaluated, leading to the resulting decision or solution. 

At its core, critical thinking is about being able to listen, and respond to any information and not just simply accepting any information at face value. To question that information is the most important part of critical thinking.  "It is a part of scientific, mathematical, historical, economic and philosophical thinking, all of which are necessary for the future development of our society".*

Sounds complex eh? It's not. When you hear your neighbor rant about a thing or two gossiping another neighbor, do you instantly believe the person? I'm pretty sure it's not. In that scenario you have already exhibited basic critical thinking skills. You ask your neighbor one question after another and he or she answers it. Of course with every answer you analyse whether everything your neighbor said could be pieced together or makes sense. And it is totally up to you really whether you believe that story or not. Another example of using your critical thinking faculties is when you plan for your son's birthday party. You consider all the possible places to celebrate, the budget at hand or budget that needs to be saved for that event, inviting people, planning games and amusement, the food - who will prepare, was the dishes, cook, etc. Of course you get all the information and analyze it, coming up with all the preferable factors and put them into action. The culmination of all the planning is the party itself. There are still many things where we can practice critical thinking but I am not going to deal with that further. There's too many of them.

Critical Thinking as Defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1987**

A statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul, presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987. 

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. 
  
It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking — in being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes — is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking.

Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior. It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills ("as an exercise") without acceptance of their results.

Critical thinking varies according to the motivation underlying it. When grounded in selfish motives, it is often manifested in the skillful manipulation of ideas in service of one’s own, or one's groups’, vested interest. As such it is typically intellectually flawed, however pragmatically successful it might be. When grounded in fair-mindedness and intellectual integrity, it is typically of a higher order intellectually, though subject to the charge of "idealism" by those habituated to its selfish use.


Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of degree and dependent on, among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a critical thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion. For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a life-long endeavor.

So is it really important to think critically? A resounding answer would be yes!

Also, here is a good video presentation about Critical Thinking by Qualiasoup.

PS:
I have created a facebook group about this topic. I am no expert but I will do what I can to learn more and SHARE more! Please like the page.

I would like to say thank you for the 4000 views I currently have on my website. I really appreciate everything and I will do my best to give more basic science information and share more from different media.


* http://www.wikihow.com/
** https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

A Maverick for Science: Nikola Tesla

I never heard of this name when I was a kid. I can barely remember when I first heard his name. Must have stumbled upon his name maybe but did not really put his name in my list of personal heroes of Science, like Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Pierre and Marie Curie, Alessandro Volta, and - I think that was it! I never imagined that during my youth I only know a handful of scientific heroes and heroines.  But I am very sure I can't remember hearing or reading his name during those times. I do wonder that sometimes, Why is that?

Of course I am familiar with this person now that I am an adult. Who wouldn't? Any Red Alert player heard his name as a defensive tower for the Soviets, shooting lightning bolts on any allied soldier desperate for a quick kill. That name stuck in my mind ever since.

His name is Nikola Tesla. A Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist. A brilliant inventor and at the same time a mysterious figure in his later years, he made significant and lasting contributions in the science of Electricity. His vision and his passion produced his greatest contributions in the field of Alternating Current electricity supply system (AC).

He lived during the time electricity was at its infancy. He went to the US as an immigrant. Worked with Thomas Edison for some time and then was able to find financiers for his projects and inventions. As Wikipedia gladly summarized for us:

Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before emigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla as a consultant to help develop a power system using alternating current. Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs which included patented devices and theoretical work used in the invention of radio communication, for his X-ray experiments, and for his ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project. 

His Tower is being financed by one of the big giants of Wall Street at that time, J.P. Morgan. The death sentence to the said project was also when Guilliermo Marconi was able to transmit a letter wirelessly from Newfoundland to England, shattering hopes whatever Tesla have on accomplishing his goal of wireless communication.  He also told Morgan that the tower can also provide wireless electricity. Ultimately after seeing that his project would not be profitable after all, he abandoned Tesla.  He Tesla died poor and unknown in January 1943.

During the last few decades of the 20th century, due to the rising demand of energy and the almost endless quest for renewable and sustainable sources of energy, researchers, scientists and people from all walks of life rekindled their curiosity about the life of this maverick for science. I am not sure whether Tesla is the reason but there is a movement called the "free energy" movement that stemmed from this quest for free and sustainable energy. The mainstream scientific community is still skeptical of the claims of these inventors from this movement.

Thanks to the internet, there are lots of resources about the person behind that extraordinary brain. You can watch a simple documentary below.

Here is a toast to everybody who supports my blog since the start. Two tesla coils singing an all-familiar tune.

Links of Interest: Note, I am showing all the links that has a pro and con approach to the Edison-Tesla rivalry at that time. Not siding who, just finding it interesting that people still have a fondness for defending long time heroes. You decide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

http://amasci.com/tesla/tesla.html

http://www.teslauniverse.com/

http://www.tesla-coil-builder.com/Articles/july_11_1934b.htm

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/index.html

http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/bio.htm

http://listverse.com/2012/06/07/10-ways-edison-treated-tesla-like-a-jerk/

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2013/02/oatmeal_comic_about_tesla_and.html


http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/10-inventions-of-nikola-tesla-that.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nikola_Tesla_patents

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131003-nikola-tesla-surprising-facts-statue-museum-science/

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nikola-tesla.htm

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-nikola-tesla/

Where's that particle?

The "reason of our existence" some scientists would call it. The particle that makes stuff for mystery stories. Hiding under the radar of science. Elusive and expensive to find. The "God" particle. 

Their quest took them 40 years to complete. Time, effort and an unimaginable amount of money and resources has been allocated for this search, which, in that long period of time, would be called worthwhile.

Peter W. Higgs, right, and François Englert at a conference in Switzerland on July 4, 2012. Source: New York Times

In 1964, Peter Higgs, Francois Englert, and their colleagues theorized that there must be something that might explain why other particles have mass, why all things hold together, why we exist.  That something is the Higgs boson. 

It is popularized by the media as the "God particle". The nickname comes from the title of a 1993 book "The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?" by Leon Lederman, a Physicist, a Nobel Prizewinner and Fermilab director. Lederman wrote this as a response to the US government decision to halt the construction and support of the Superconducting Super Collider, partly constructed competitor of the Large Hadron Collider, that he championed since its inception in 1983 until its shutdown in 1993.

Leon Lederman

Lederman on explaining why he named it the God Particle:

"Today ... we have the standard model, which reduces all of reality to a dozen or so particles and four forces. ... It's a hard-won simplicity [...and...] remarkably accurate. But it is also incomplete and, in fact, internally inconsistent... This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one..."

—Leon M. Lederman and Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question p. 22

It was on July 2012 when the Higgs boson particle was discovered in the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. And it has been billed as one of the biggest scientific achivement for the last 50 years. On March 14, coinciding with Albert Einsteins' birthday, they announced that, the particle they have been looking for has characteristics that looked more like the Higgs boson particle.

Both Higgs and Englert, now in their 80's, was awarded the Nobel Price for Physics for all their efforts in the Higgs boson on October 8,2013. Their prize of $1.2 million has been awarded last December 10,2013. The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian committees in recognition of cultural and/or scientific advances.* The founder of the Nobel Prize is Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of Dynamite.


One might be shouting expletives when one hear of this so called "God particle" and how it shaped our universe. This is the particle that actually gave particles mass. Without it, there wouldn't be any atoms, without atoms, no molecules, without molecules no DNA, without DNA, no living things would exist, and that includes us.As we look further into the vast void that makes up the cosmos, or look deeper into the "inner" cosmos of atoms, quarks and bosons, we help foster a new age of scientific discovery. Pushing us further advanced, further enligthened and the scientific enterprise will continue pushing forward, and there are no signs of stopping.

The Four Fundamental Forces

Have you ever wondered what keeps our atoms from scattering all over the cosmos? What keeps our feet on the ground? What makes those wonderful gadgets and gizmos work? We as common people could only think of answers within our limits of thinking. We can easily say Gravity keeps our feet on the ground and that is correct. Electricity is making all these wonderful machines work and that too is correct. And that's it. We don't know what keep us being, well ... us! If most of the atom is entirely empty space, then why I can see you? Why I can see my monitor? Why I can touch it?

I heard it somewhere that Truth is stranger than fiction. Stranger is the fact that our entire cosmos is "governed" by these invisible forces. Right now there are four fundamental forces that shape us and the Universe as a whole. A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object's interaction with another object. Newton defined a force as anything that caused an object to accelerate -- F = ma, where F is force, m is mass and a is acceleration.What are these so called fundamental forces of nature?

An article from HowStuffworks.com explains it clearly. Here is the link to the article:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/fundamental-forces-of-nature.htm

Currently, there are 4 fundamental forces that have been identified.*

1. Electromagnetic Force
2. Gravitational Force
3. Strong Nuclear Force
4. Weak Nuclear Force

The strong interaction is very strong, but very short-ranged. It acts only over ranges of order 10-13 centimeters and is responsible for holding the nuclei of atoms together. It is basically attractive, but can be effectively repulsive in some circumstances.

The electromagnetic force causes electric and magnetic effects such as the repulsion between like electrical charges or the interaction of bar magnets. It is long-ranged, but much weaker than the strong force. It can be attractive or repulsive, and acts only between pieces of matter carrying electrical charge.

The weak force is responsible for radioactive decay and neutrino interactions. It has a very short range and, as its name indicates, it is very weak.

The gravitational force is weak, but very long ranged. Furthermore, it is always attractive, and acts between any two pieces of matter in the Universe since mass is its source.


Sources:

* http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/cosmology/forces.html

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980127c.html

Science and my seeking spirituality

Courtesy of: http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/images/h_consciousness.jpg

As a young boy, I was fascinated with so many things. My experience though is mainly appreciation of all things visual, things that I can see. I was fascinated with the image of Earth, pictured from outer space, I was fascinated by the Mona Lisa, that timeless painting of Leornardo da Vinci, a picture of a polar bear living the life in the Arctic. I also appreciate the natural landscape, as well as skylines of the urban jungle which is the Metropolis. Though this appreciation is not really spiritual in a sense. I find them beautiful and majestic, but that's it. I don't find anything spiritual in them. It is just late in my life that I wonder why? Then I asked myself, what is spiritual? How do I define a spiritual experience?

My teenage years brought me to a different level of appreciation, the Auditory kind. Like most teenagers living in the early 90's, I was introduced to music. The kind that you would hear on the radio. I don't have any explanation then, until now, as to why in the first 12 years of my life I don't have any liking to any music. I hear sounds and notes and melodies, but I have no liking. The Filipino band Eraserheads changed all of that. Though I am not thanking them for making me a music lover. It just happened that they have the right stuff for my ears. Maybe it's something else, or maybe it's really normal for teenagers to be introduced to music in their teenage years.

When I listen to music, with its different genres, I appreciate those that makes my brain shiver with delight. My friend called it an "eargasm" which I only heard late in my life. Rock music was the first of my attempts to find appreciation in music. As the years passed, it evolved to include appreciation in other genres like R&B, Trance, New Wave, 70's Disco and other styles of music such as Classical music and Eastern styles of music like Sufi and Japanese Zen style which is for the meditating kind. But I am not meditative in nature. I don't reflect and I don't meditate. But when I hear something for the first time, and I shiver and experience this kind of electric surge into my brain, then I start to cherish the melodies and close my eyes satisfied with what I am hearing.

This same appreciation in my Visual and Hearing faculties, helped me in appreciating Science more. Looking at a picture of a Galaxy, listening to a Science lecture, watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos, reading a 900 page Science book. All of these information gathering helped me gather more insights on what really is spiritual for me. I don't know why of all disciplines, Science is the one that earned my respect and liking. Is it because it answers my questions about life and its origins? Is it because of the sheer greatness of the technologies it brings to help man prosper?

As a kid, all information that I get is based on "Authority figures" like my parents, the teacher, the priest and mass media like television. At school, memorizing things could be a hard task, but I guess that is the only way we could get information permanently into our heads. At church, hearing sermons and interacting with your community's lay people helped you get their view of reality though the word of God. For my parents, well, their upbrining, their values, their beliefs, are also passed down to me. For mass media, anything goes (as far as I am concerned) good or bad information, misinformation they are all there, we just don't know how to filter the vast source of information we are getting there.

But as I grow older, as I experience the life outside of the Academe (that more than a decade of school), as I experience the "real world", I realize that living is not just about doing your best of your abilities to earn a living. I realize that living is not just about having friends and having a good time like it is your last,  I realize that living is not just about loving and taking care of your family and working a job to survive. Life is really an extension of your learning years, a continuous learning experience. And part of this experience is to seek your inner peace. Seeking something that would make your life and that of your loved ones easy and satisfying to live with. Sure, money will solve most of that, but I think that this desire to learn more about the Universe is the most important thing that we have.

Many would ask me, why learn if that could not be used in our everyday lives. Sure they have a point, but I am not talking about Math and Chemistry or Engineering. I am talking about seeking to answer the questions you have and learn more from it. Seeking to understand why we are here? What is our purpose? And having a Scientific outlook in life would answer that for you. Learning the answers about the cosmos, or even thinking what the answer would be, is a profound experience. Staring at the night sky, seeing the Milky way, is a spiritual experience for me, just by looking at the grand scale of things, realizing that the photons of a star 2,000 light years away, reached my eye after leaving that very star and travelled the vast dark space between that star and my eye for 2 thousand years. How exciting that thought would be. Looking at an image of an atom, thinking that you are actually made of trillions of that one atom you are looking at, is an exciting thought.

Carl Sagan says best when he described what Spirituality in a Scientific outlook would be:

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

My quest for this inner peace. This spirituality is not yet over. Nevertheless, I am confident that our search for who we are and our place in the cosmos can be answered. These are valid questions Science could answer, but until that answers are questioned, I am comfortable that having a Scientific worldview would make that search less fearful.